Missions
Our vision for Missions at Church of the City is to join God in His sacrificial mission in the world to reach the lost and serve the poor. We are committed to joining God where He is already at work. We know that mission is not something we initiate, it is something we respond to.
Based on Matthew 25:34-40, we believe that encountering God inherently involves growing in proximity to the poor, the stranger, the sick, and the prisoner. We also know from Luke 19:10 that Jesus came to seek and save that which was lost. We look to the life of Jesus, who preached the good news of the Kingdom of God with boldness while simultaneously moving toward the marginalized with compassion. We believe that the mission of God is both spiritual and social, it is both justice and evangelism. This involves the proclamation of the Gospel, the good news that the kingdom of God is near, and the demonstration of the Gospel, evidence that this is true through acts of justice and mercy.
We also believe that every local mission should have a global expression and that every global mission should have a local expression. By connecting what we do globally to where we are active in our own city, we translate the burdens that we carry for the nations to our own neighborhoods and communities. By connecting the work we do locally to global needs, we catch God's vision for restoring all things and all people to Himself.
Evangelism and justice are the two main avenues through which we engage in sacrificial mission. Alpha and Send Saturday are our local expressions of evangelism and City Renewal is our local expression of justice. Many Hopes is our global partner in both evangelism and justice. You can learn more about all of these things and more below.
City Renewal is the local justice and mercy arm of missions at Church of the City New York. We are committed to being in New York for New York and are not content to simply extract from the city all that it can offer; we are called to engage it with purpose, compassion, and sacrificial boldness. Our hope is to be the kind of church that if we closed our doors tomorrow, the city would notice. We long for a day when the Church starts solving the city’s problems. All great moves of God have been marked by social reform and renewal. We will most effectively achieve this level of change by focusing on three core issues that impact New Yorkers: homelessness, incarceration, and immigrant and refugee care. We engage these issues by partnering with established partners in the city to meet the most significant needs of our city. Our hope is that church-wide engagement in sacrificial mission bleeds into individual burden for the people in our communities.
If you would like to volunteer with City Renewal, you can apply here today.
City Renewal
OUR PARTNERS
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This partner organization exists to promote the flourishing of New Yorkers overcoming homelessness and marginalization by providing compassionate services and transformative community. City Renewal teams help The Bowery Mission serve this community by helping to host Alpha. Alpha is a dinner and discussion series where guests are invited to explore deeper questions about life through a Christian lens. Guests are welcome to ask anything and challenge everything as they explore the truth claims of Christianity. Volunteer opportunities are on Wednesdays from 6:30pm to 9:00pm at the Tribeca Emergency Shelter.
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This partner organization works to empower and equip those experiencing homelessness to be dependent on God, independent in their self-care, and interdependent on the community around them. City Renewal serves during their Community Meal, which is a hot meal that intentionally brings together the homed and homeless. It is preceded by a gospel-oriented church service where those experiencing homelessness and those who are housed worship together and the evening ends with a shared meal together.
Volunteers will help prepare the meal while the worship service is happening, and then they will serve housed and homeless community members and even sit around the table with them and share the meal with them when able to. Opportunities are on Sundays from 5:35 to 7:15 pm.
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This organization partners with teenagers and young adults who are incarcerated or awaiting adjudication for a court case. They exist to create a faith-based continuity of care model geared toward fostering holistic connection and secure relationships with young people during any point of contact with the juvenile justice system: Community, Courts, and Corrections. City Renewal teams serve as mentors at Horizon Juvenile Center in South Bronx.
Volunteers will serve on a weekly rotation, visiting Horizon Juvenile Center for 1 hr, attending court dates, and supporting family members. Apply to be placed on our interest list. Opportunities will most likely present themselves on a weekday evening. We ask our mentors to commit to serving with young people for at least one year in order to build relational equity and trust.
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This organization equips churches to serve currently and formerly incarcerated people and their families. In partnership with Prison Fellowship Angel Tree, our church helps to support the families of prisoners year-round through delivering Christmas gifts on behalf of incarcerated parents, sending kids to summer camp, facilitating one-day sports camps, and more.
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This partner organization works in food deserts to end food insecurity by providing people in need with freshly-cooked meals, an emergency food pantry, and referrals to community services. City Renewal Teams help with the emergency food pantry, which provides the equivalent of three meals a day for three days for a family of four and serves approximately 1,500 families each month. Volunteer opportunities are on Saturdays from 10:00 am to 1:15 pm in West Harlem or Washington Heights.
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This partner organization serves those experiencing homelessness with a mobile soup kitchen and connections to additional resources, like medical care and housing. People can receive a hot meal, hygiene kits and socks, and a place to be known. City Renewal teams serve in Harlem or the Bronx. Volunteer opportunities are Saturdays from 10:15 am to 1:15 pm.
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This partner organization is New York’s largest provider serving youth experiencing homelessness. Covenant House’s mission is to help each young person find safety and refuge from the dangers of living on the streets through compassion, unconditional love, and absolute respect. Community Groups from Church of the City New York can volunteer to organize and host birthday parties for recipients of Covenant House’s services.
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This organization partners with churches, ministries, and individuals to provide content to prison inmates and their families. Our partnership with God Behind Bars provides access to our worship and teaching for hundreds of thousands of people who are incarcerated across the nation, as well as resources and intermittent events.
SHAREABLE RESOURCE GUIDE
Our City Renewal Team has compiled local food, shelter, and church resources in both English and Spanish into an easily shareable resource for you to use as you bless beyond barriers in the city.
We encourage you to download and save the PDF version of the guide below, and share its resources whenever you can!
Alpha
Alpha is a dinner and discussion series where people who do not consider themselves Christians can come together over a home-cooked meal and explore faith through life’s biggest questions, like “Is there more to life than this?” Alpha is for seekers, skeptics, atheists, people who are spiritual but not religious, and people from other faith backgrounds like Buddhism, Hinduism, or Islam to be welcomed into a lovely apartment, fed a beautiful meal, and get to explore the truth claims of Christianity. All the while they are able to ask anything or challenge everything without coercion or judgement. We have seen hundreds of people come to faith in Jesus through Alpha and we would encourage everyone in our church to invite a friend and walk alongside them on their spiritual journey. If you are seeking and want to sign up to attend Alpha you can RSVP for the next course here.
If you would like to join the Alpha Team, please apply here.
Send Saturday
Send Saturday is a monthly opportunity to corporately gather to be equipped to share the Gospel and then be sent out in pairs into the city to prayer walk the neighborhood and have spiritual conversations. Jesus' final words were, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8).
We want to be a people who take Jesus at His words and who make His last commands our first concern. We have prayed for hundreds of New Yorkers on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen and seen dozens of them receive salvation on the spot. Whether you are nervous to start a spiritual conversation or have been sharing the gospel your entire life, Send Saturday is for you. You can sign up here.
GLOBAL PARTNER
MANY HOPES
Many Hopes’ vision is based on survivor driven change. They work in various contexts around the world where injustice is present, and they resource survivors of injustice to become change agents in their own communities. Many Hopes believes that children born into poverty are not a problem to be solved, but a solution waiting to be unleashed, and they partner with high-impact local leaders and organizations across the globe to rescue and equip children to become changemakers in their communities and beyond.
Follow Along
Subscribe to our monthly Missions Newsletter to hear stories collected from across the missional expressions of our church.
As compelling missional disciples, we aspire to live on sacrificial mission for spiritual, social, cultural, and global renewal by reaching the lost and serving the poor. Our desire is that these stories of hope will stir, encourage, and center the vision of our church in your heart: to see the fame and deeds of God renewed and known in our time.